Object recognition systems are typically utilized to find a given object in an image or video sequence. Humans recognize a multitude of objects in images with little effort, despite the fact that the image of the objects may vary somewhat in different viewpoints, in many different sizes/scale or even when the objects are translated or rotated. Objects can even be recognized by humans when the objects are partially obstructed from view. Hence, object recognition systems aim to duplicate the abilities of human vision and understanding of an image.
Object recognition systems are utilized for acquiring, processing, analyzing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions. This image understanding can be seen as the inference of symbolic information from image data using models constructed with the aid of geometry, physics, statistics, and learning theory. Many object recognition systems are able to recognize a single object that fills a significant part of the camera's field of view. However, a significantly harder use case presents the challenge of recognizing many objects in a single image, with high accuracy. Products that are displayed and sold on shelves are particularly difficult for current systems to recognize, because these products tend to have similar labeling across a brand, get moved around, and/or become partially blocked by each other. Current day object recognition algorithms can fail to correctly count the number of product facings.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method that can recognize many objects in a single image, with high accuracy.
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The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present disclosure so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.